Early today the House narrowly passed a plan to cut federal spending by 50 billion dollars over the next five years.
Both Congressmen Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley supported the measure.
The House is now considering a bill to extend tax credits worth about 57 billion dollars.
As New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein reports, that package of legislation has drawn fire from liberals as well as fiscal conservatives.
New Hampshire 2nd District Congressman Charlie Bass says the nation's top priority over the next decade should be to reduce the growth of entitlement programs.
And he says the bill he supported today to cut 50 billion dollars over the next five years from programs like Medicaid, food stamps and student loans is a good start.
First District Congressman Jeb Bradley was unavailable for comment.
But he said in a written statement: "The growth of entitlement programs is spiraling out o f control.."
Bass estimates that in 40 years, left unchecked these types of programs will overrun federal spending, leaving no funding for the Justice Department or Homeland Security.
The spending cuts the House made, he says, overall, are modest.
5:!8 the growth of the programs we are talking about is going to be well over 7% a year. If we had done nothing the growth would be 7.1% a year. It's a tenth of one percent of the growth of the overall program...we are talking about a very, very small amount of money.
Democrats and advocates for low-income residents blasted the plan.
Critics like James Horney with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says there is nothing insignificant about the cuts at all.
2:23 the cuts they proposed in food stamps will mean there are 220,000 low income people who will no longer be eligible...and also 70 thousand legal immigrants and wouldn’t be eligible.
Republicans passed the spending cuts with an eye towards trimming the federal deficit, now at more than 300 billion dollars.
President Bush applauded the move, saying it will help him cut the deficit in half by 2009.
But next week the House is expected to take up a tax cut package worth 57 billion dollars.
If both House measures passed, it would add 7 billion to the deficit.
But Congressman Bass says the nation needs the tax cuts.
8:07 if we do nothing, I don't want to see economic stagnation or even a recession. We have a lot of problems in this country and one of the ones shouldn't be staring at the teeth of a recession.
That one-two combo of spending cuts and tax breaks is what Robert Bixby calls schizophrenic fiscal policy.
Bixby is with the non-partisan but conservative Concord Coalition that advocates for deficit reduction.
10:58 we are not collecting enough revenue to pay for the spending that we are doing...we are trying to fight a war, we've got a prescription drug benefit next year, we've got Hurricane Katrina cleanup and to say the way to pay for all this is to cut taxes, just doesn't make any sense.
Bixby says Congress either needs to raise revenues to pay for its spending, or cut it.
Otherwise, he warns, the nation will face unsustainable deficits.
The New Hampshire Democratic Party blamed Congressmen Bass and Bradley for going after programs used by the poor, while supporting the tax cuts.
But Bass disputes the argument that the tax cuts go primarily to the rich.
He says the cuts primarily benefit the low and middle income brackets.
11:10 the tax relief package, despite the Democrats rhetoric, does not primarily benefit the wealthy. Most of the people who benefit are in the low and middle income bracket.
Citing statistics from the liberal Tax Policy Center, James Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says make no mistake, the rich do benefit from the tax cuts.
9:01 those cuts, dealing with capitol gains and dividends, go overwhelmingly to high income people. over 90% of the benefit goes to taxpayers with over $200,000 a year. More than half of the benefits of those two cuts go to people with incomes of over one million a year.
In terms of the deficit, the Concord Coaltion's Robert Bixby worries what will happen when the House and Senate meet to compromise over the spending and tax cut bills.
2:00 my guess is that both of the tax cut bills will jump to about 70 billion at some point...and the spending cut bills will shrink to about 35 billion. So I think when all is said and done here there will be a much bigger gap...in other words a bigger increase in the deficit than right now.
For NHPR News, I'm DG.
